Kepler’s Most Influential Work: His Laws Fully Explained

£75,000 first edition, a fine copy, of the work which ‘ranks next to Ptolemy’s Almagest and Copernicus’ De revolutionibus... [It] is the first systematic complete presentation of astronomy to introduce the idea of modern celestial mechanics founded by Kepler’ (Caspar, Kepler, p 297).

25 KEPLER, Johannes. Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. Linz, Johann Plank, 1618–22, Frankfurt, Georg Tampach, 1621 3 vols in one, 8vo (158 x 94 mm), pp [xxviii] 417 [recte 409] [3, blank]; [ii] 419–622 [2, errata and blank]; [xii] 641–932 [16, index] with numerous woodcut diagrams in text and one folding printed table; a large, fresh, unrestored, attractive copy, without the foxing or browning that often affects this work, in contemporary yapped German vellum, blue edges, slightly later label in gilt on an orange parchment on spine. £75,000 first edition, a fine copy, of the work which ‘ranks next to Ptolemy’s Almagest and Copernicus’ De revolutionibus... [It] is the first systematic complete presentation of astronomy to introduce the idea of modern celestial mechanics founded by Kepler’ (Caspar, Kepler, p 297). As Caspar points out, the modest title of the work ‘gives no inkling that Kepler had erected an entirely new structure on the foundation of the Copernican theory, that he had rescued the Copernican conception, at that time disputed and little believed, and helped it to break through by introducing his planet laws and by treating the phenomena of the motions physically.’ ‘Kepler designed this work as an inexpensive and readily understandable textbook of the new astronomy, hence the octavo size, the small and crowded type, and the question-and-answer format. By far the longest of Kepler’s books, it was originally issued in three parts... As a result of its Copernican view the book was placed on the Index, thereby joining Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus which had been placed on the Index a few years earlier in 1616. ‘In its comprehensiveness and systematic character the Epitome is comparable to Ptolemy’s Almagest and Copernicus’sWilliam Patrick Watson Olympia 2011 De Revolutionibus. One important detail is Kepler’s extension of his first two planetary laws to all the other planets as well as to the moon and the four satellites of Jupiter’ (Johannes Kepler Quadricentennial Celebration, University of Texas at Austin (1971), 77). ‘At the same time that Kepler was preparing his planetary ephemerides and his Harmonices mundi, he also embarked upon his longest and perhaps most influential book, an introductory textbook for Copernican astronomy in general and Keplerian astronomy in particular... The Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae gave a systematic treatment of all of heliocentric astronomy, including the three relationships now called Kepler’s laws. ‘Although Book IV came last conceptually, it was published in sequence. Subtitled “Celestial Physics, that is, Every Size, Motion, and Proportion in the Heavens Explained by a Cause Either Natural or Archetypal”, it is the most remarkable section of the Epitome. To a large extent it epitomized both the Harmonice and Kepler’s new lunar theory, completed just before this part was sent to press... ‘Kepler’s harmonic law, which he had discovered just as the Harmonice was going to press, now received a far more extensive treatment’ (Owen Gingerich, ‘Johannes Kepler’ in The general history of astronomy, volume 2, Planetary astronomy from the Renaissance to the rise of astrophysics Part A: Tycho Brahe to Newton, q.v. for a detailed analysis of the Epitome). ‘Kepler’s Epitome... presents a systematic treatment of the field of astronomy, perhaps the fullest such treatment since the Almagest of Ptolemy... ‘Kepler, reiterating ideas which he had expressed earlier, hypothesizes that force is needed to sustain motion and that hence some force must be acting on the planets. This force, he speculates, originates from the sun, decreases with distance from the sun, can act over a vacuum, and may be magnetic. In contrast to many scientists of the time, Kepler believes much of space to be a vacuum’ (Parkinson). In common with most copies, volume two has the second issue title-page, dated 1622 instead of 1620; otherwise the two issues are identical (see Caspar). Barchas 1147; Carli and Favaro 76 and 92; Caspar 55, 69, 66; Cinti 60, 72, 67; Lalande p 205; Parkinson 70; Zinner 4662, 4820, 4870

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